


A Bad Woman

by CotyCat82



Series: The Good & The Bad [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 06:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4511931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CotyCat82/pseuds/CotyCat82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which, Peggy feels badly for wanting to dislike Daniel Sousa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bad Woman

**Author's Note:**

> This is companion piece to a previous work “A Good Man.” Like that story, this was also supposed to be smut, but is not. I’m labeling it as mature though, since some heavy petting is described.
> 
> Indigowild was kind enough to offer an edit and constructive commentary on this and I am grateful. It's better for it.

She was frankly ashamed of how actively she had wanted to dislike him. Just how much energy and effort she’d put into it. Really, it was probably one of the worst things she’d done in her life. 

They’d not known about the crutch when he first joined the SSR. The army, with their tendency to provide at best half-assed information and at most nothing at all during the height of the war, had continued their track record by leaving that rather pertinent detail out. 

All they knew of the incoming Agent Daniel Sousa was that: 1) he’d been a track star in high school and won a college scholarship, which he had given up when the call to serve came, 2) he’d been discharged honorably as a first lieutenant with an impressive as hell war record, his bravery illustrated with numerous medals and citations 3) and that he’d recovered from some kind of war injury, but was now cleared to serve again as a field agent at the SSR. 

Dooley, who’d clearly been looking forward to meeting the decorated war hero, had very nearly stuttered at the sight of the dark man limping over to him and extending the hand not griping the crutch. To the chief’s credit, he recovered quickly and firmly shook Sousa’s outstretched hand, but he had undoubtedly demoted Sousa to desk duty in his mind during those first few seconds. 

Already seething about being made a secretary herself, she should have felt some kind of empathy with Daniel. But she didn’t. She couldn’t. He’d at least had the opportunity to walk in the door before being sidelined. She’d been relegated to coffee and lunch duty before she had even reported for duty because she was a woman. 

If Daniel was angry about his poor treatment, the snide remarks about his limp or being called the “office gimp,” he didn’t show it. Professional, polite, he came in each day and did his job and did it well. Putting in extra hours and working double shifts, he really contributed to the SSR’s work. If he’d been able-bodied, no doubt he would have been praised for it. Needless to say, Dooley barely seemed to notice. 

She’d realized later that it was because he was in awe of her that he’d stayed away from her during those first couple of weeks. Seemingly too shy or too uncertain of how to speak to a woman in the workplace, she’d just written him off as yet another typical man. Until the day that they’d both rode the lift up to the office, and he’d tried to bring up Steve. 

“I met him once,” Sousa had begun uncertainly. “Well sort of. Not personally. He got my company back into action.” He’d gone on to stutter through a tale of rescue from behind enemy lines somewhere in Germany. She’d stopped listening midway through, annoyed at once again being reduced to Captain America’s girl. When he’d finally finished, she’d told him in a short clipped tone that “Captain Rogers” had saved a lot of people, before storming off to take her anger out on the coffee maker. 

After that she made a point of being distant with him, avoiding or ignoring him as best as she could. Daniel didn’t seem to take the cold shoulder personally. If anything, he was more respectful and polite with her. It’s not that she was ever as cruel to him as the others were or rude to him. It was just that the very sight of him annoyed her. The sound of his crutch, the way he stepped to the side for her when she went by, or his offers to get the lunch order so she needn’t irritated her beyond words. She resented how nice he was when she very much so wanted to dislike him. 

Things shifted, even before she realized it, the day he nearly killed himself in the office kitchen. He’d slid in some water that no one had bothered to clean up from the floor, hit the counter top, and knocked the toaster right off it trying to steady himself. The commotion was loud enough to be heard throughout the entire office. Red-faced and embarrassed, he’d picked it up and gone back to work. Later that day, he had politely asked her if she knew how to order a replacement. 

It was a mishap that shouldn’t have turned into what it did. The office seemed to have gotten a rise out of it, and Daniel’s fall became some kind of cruel, lasting joke. He’d arrive in the morning to find stacks of toast piled inches high on his desk or drawings of a toaster flying through the air on his chair. They’d even taken to calling him Toaster or asking him randomly if he preferred jam or butter.

It was beyond juvenile, and she frankly wasn’t sure how he endured it. She would have knocked someone out cold within the first week. Daniel simply seemed to shrug it off. He never once gave a reaction that they could use against him. He just showed up each day, ignored their jeers, and did his job. And she felt herself begrudgingly begin to respect and admire him for it. 

Slowly, steadily, by doing nothing more than being himself, Daniel wore her down. To the point that she’d been flattered when he asked her to join him for a drink after the fiasco with Howard’s weapons. It was a complement to be admired by a decent, nice-looking man after all. 

So she accepted, more to prove to herself that she was moving on with her life than for anything else. But over time one drink became two, two became dinner, and dinner became dancing...well, swaying since Daniel’s two-step days were over. Their evenings together left her feeling alight from within. She’d forgotten that she was young and beautiful and that there was joy in being alive. He reminded her. 

She compared him to Steve of course, how could she not. Steve would always be her measuring stick for what a person should be, and Daniel more than held muster. Both men were kind and compassionate and put the greater good before their own self interests. And both were willing to spend, or give, their lives fighting the good fight. 

And there were also the striking physical similarities that sometimes took Peggy off guard. They weren’t obvious as Steve was fair and Daniel was dark, but they were there none the less. Both men had long eyelashes that shadowed their faces and dimples that pinched when they smiled. Daniel and Steve both laughed low and soft, in quiet warm chuckles. And both had strong, but gentle hands, with long, dexterous fingers that hypnotized Peggy when they used them. 

It made Peggy fret and worry that what was drawing her to Daniel was an echo of Steve. She seriously considered breaking things off with him entirely because he deserved better than that. But she could never bring herself to do so, despite her intentions. She couldn’t quite make herself give up the way he made her feel, even if it wasn’t fair to Daniel. And that began to make her question if she was quite the person that she wanted to be. 

But what made her truly feel horrible was the raw, barely hidden desire she felt for him. Steve’s physical pull after the serum had been obvious, but Daniel’s was hidden by loose jackets and sweater vests. By the crutch that made people look away from him and not towards him. 

Daniel had to move half his body weight every day with his core and his arms. It left him with a solid, strong body. A desirable body. She’d gotten a glimpse of that when he’d been chained to a hospital bed after being exposed to Midnight Oil, the strong bulge of the muscles in his arms surprising her as they had stripped him to his undershirt. But she’d finally felt it with her own hands when they’d tumble and twist together in heavy petting sessions after late nights out. 

She loved to unbutton his dress shirt and pull his undershirt up to get a look at his pronounced abdominal muscles and feel them contract under her palms. Or undo his belt, sliding her hands down the back of his pants to cup his ass, which was pure hard muscle. All the while his hands would remain on her hips or in her hair unless she moved them herself, always waiting for her permission before trailing anywhere that could be considered unseemly. It made her feel like a truly bad woman to be treated with such respect, while she was in the process of feeling him up like a slab of meat. But that never seemed to stop her. 

When they’d gotten particularly hot and heavy one day, Peggy’s baser instincts had taken over. She’d asked him if he had a condom on him. His entire body stiffened at the question. 

He shook his head, turning bright red. “Peggy, I should probably tell you now that I’ve never….well I’ve never.” 

It was like getting a bucket of cold water thrown on her. “Not ever?” 

“No. Not ever.” 

She pulled back, righting her clothing. Daniel, with her lipstick on his mouth and his shirt somewhere on the floor, remained open and exposed, but he still kept his eyes level with hers, even as a blush swept over his cheeks. As tactfully as she could, she asked, “Were you waiting for marriage?”

“Not exactly. I was waiting for the right person.” 

The echo of it – the right partner – made her gut clench. “I see. I’m sorry, if I carried you further than you had wanted.” 

“You didn’t,” he’d told her reassuringly, pushing himself up from the bed where he’d been flat on his back to lightly touch her arm. 

She should have ended things then, well not right at that moment, but after that. Over dinner perhaps or drinks. Somewhere on neutral ground, with all of their clothing on, she should have told him it had been a kick but that she didn’t think it was working anymore. 

She’d been building up her resolve to do so, but every day Daniel seemed to unknowingly chip away at it. Bringing her a cup of tea, made properly, when she was clearly having a rough go. Putting on her favorite records first, even when he had others he preferred. Letting her order the wine at dinner as she knew more about it than him. Being kind, and sweet, and making it hard to give him up. 

So she carried on with him, slightly ashamed of herself for it, but still unwilling to drop him. Then one day, without real reason, she asked if she could see his injured leg. 

They’d been sitting on Daniel’s small sofa, him reading aloud to her, her head resting on his lap. 

He stilled to the point that she wasn’t sure he was breathing. “I-. Are you sure?” 

“Yes. I mean yes, if you are comfortable showing me.” She’d never even felt what was left of his leg through his clothing. Despite the intimacy of their encounters, she’d never pulled his pants down below his hips. Always instinctively sensing, even as he let her manhandle him, that his leg was the one part of his body he would have objected to her touching.

“So long as you are comfortable seeing it. It’s not pretty, Peggy. I don’t want you to think any less of me for it.” 

She pulled herself up to sit beside him. “Why in the word would it make me think less of you?” 

“Because there is less of me.” His face a carefully schooled mask of neutrality. 

“You served your country, Daniel, and were wounded in the process. It’s a badge of honor, not something to be ashamed of.” 

Daniel shrugged at that, but moved to begin undoing his pants. She stayed him, putting her hand over his. His dark eyes gazed up at her, clearly vulnerable. She’d known, of course, that he felt a great deal for her. But she realized in the moment, hand over hand, that he clearly loved her. A real, solid selfless love that had him waiting quietly, patiently, hopefully for her to one day feel the same way. Opening himself up to her completely, showing her his rawest wounds and emotions without hesitancy because that’s what love was to him: complete and utter ingenuous trust. 

“It’s okay, Peggy. Honest.” he said, shifting and pulling his pants down. The stump he revealed was as he warned her¬not pretty. It was covered with veiny raised scars and burned patches, but it wasn’t anything she’d not expected to see. His whole leg though had been a shock for her. It was ruined too, scared and burned and warped. Whatever hair had been on it had clearly not grown back in as it healed, the skin unnaturally shiny and tight looking. It appeared as if it was only by a slim miracle that he’d gotten to keep it at all. 

“What happened?” she asked, after taking it all in. 

“Land mine. I’d been trying to push ahead in a heavily fortified area. We didn’t know just how heavily fortified though. It was bad luck really. Stepped in the wrong spot and BOOM!”

Putting one hand on the whole leg and the other on the stump, she leaned down to kiss both. “Does it still hurt?” 

“It aches sometimes. Rain and snow can be a bitch. But the phantom pain is the worst. It’s awful to feel for something that isn’t there.” 

She wondered if there’d been double meaning in that, but before she could say anything, Daniel continued. “I hope this doesn’t change things between us.”

Running her hands up and down his legs, she smiled and looked into his eyes reassuringly. “I hope, actually, that it does.” 

But it didn’t, not really. She’d wanted to try harder to feel more for him, to return more of his affection, but despite her resolve to do so she couldn’t force her heart. You either love someone or you don’t. No amount of resolve, no revelation, no key insight was going to make her feel something she didn’t. 

Which is why when it snuck up on her that she’d not been stringing him along as she feared but had instead been falling slowly in love, she’d been so surprised. 

There was no “a-ha” moment, no scene of realization, no dramatic romantic moment. She just couldn’t cut herself off from him and the more time they spent together, the more he came to mean to her. If he was away on assignment, she missed him. When he was ill, she worried and attempted to tend to him, poor nurse though she was. When he smiled, she felt her lips tug as well. And when he saw her and his face would light up with joy just because she was in the room, she started to realize that she was doing the same thing just at the sight of him as well. 

He remembered her preferences, her likes and small concerns. And she slowly began to remember his. Like Daniel, her love for him came on steadily and slowly, but consistently and persistently. He’d run the gambit of being a pest to her, to a begrudgingly respected colleague, to a friend, to someone she lusted after, to someone she loved. 

She wasn’t a bad woman because she’d tried to steer her interactions with him, or because she’d let herself get swept away by how he felt about her and how that made her feel. It was just the course of how she’d come to care for him, how he’d eventually come to mean so much to her. 

“I think sometimes, I don’t deserve you,” she told him once, lying in the afterglow. It was nearly dawn, and she’d thought he might have drifted off to sleep. 

He hadn’t though. “Really? I think it’s the other way around.” 

She kissed his cheek and laid her head upon his chest. “It makes me feel badly sometimes that it took me so long to get here.” 

“It shouldn’t,” he told her, rubbing his hand up and down her arm gently. “Love’s not supposed to be fast. It’s supposed to be lasting.” 

“Besides,” he said as he lifted his head to look down at her, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, “I like it when you treat me badly.”


End file.
